Another much less fancy vehicle also crawled along the streets. It had yellow, Israeli-issued number plates. Posters of Arafat decorated the closed windows and scruffy kids peered out of the open ones.

The driver was making sure any traders who had opened their stalls were now dutifully closing them again.

Unsold produce

The crowd thinned out in the streets that fan out from the Manara, and the heightened atmosphere was relieved.

In the nearby Hisbeh market, in fact, there were barely suppressed smiles among the traders standing around the steel gate that locked out potential customers.

One of them is posing, fingers making victory signs, through the bars, a sardonic joke recalling the defiance of Palestinians taken prisoner by the Israeli army.

A Palestinian woman watches mourners at Manara junction

"[Mr Arafat] caused us problems when he was alive, and he's causing us problems now he's dead. We have goods to sell," said one of the traders, a religious-looking man with a grey beard, who did not want to give his name.

All around us, their wooden carts, groaning with fruit and vegetables, stood unattended with plastic sacks covering the piles of fresh produce.

"Every day a Palestinian citizen is killed by the Israeli army in Gaza or Jenin or Nablus... and they [Mr Arafat and his allies] don't do anything," says another man, not a market trader, but a garage owner from the suburbs
who has come to stand and watch.

"Why should we be more sad about him than anyone else," he adds.

Down at the Kalandia checkpoint - where the Israeli army controls all access to nearby Jerusalem from Ramallah - was quieter than usual.

'Normal day'

The dusty chaos on the Ramallah side - with taxis, buses, pedestrians all jostling for space - was more subdued than usual.

At the Kalandia checkpoint Israeli soldiers check the document of a young man trying to get to Hebron

As news of Mr Arafat sunk in, people were starting to think about the immediate implications. Would they be able to get from A to B - always a tricky prospect in the occupied West Bank - if Israel started imposing
travel restrictions to prevent unrest?

In fact the soldiers were being more polite than usual, anxious perhaps not to provoke any awkward situation. There was no evidence of the usual casual brutality that they frequently dish out to recalcitrant Palestinians.

It could be the calm before the storm, though, if people are prevented from crossing for Mr Arafat's funeral. The Eid festival approaching on
Saturday or Sunday could also trigger unrest.

The soldiers aren't allowed to talk to journalists, but it's usually possible to tease a few words out of them.

"So are you expecting any trouble today," I asked one young soldier, as he watched a colleague stop two lads from Hebron, who were apparently not allowed to enter Jerusalem from this checkpoint today, much to their
disappointment.